Die Erben

“It’s going to be pretty empty, your future: unemployment and deathly boredom”: this is the prediction made by Thomas, a high school student, to his new friend Charly, who is hustling as a small-time criminal. Each from diferent economic backgrounds but both misunderstood by their authoritarian or violent parents and peers, the two teenagers feel lost and thus fall into the deceitful eddy of old Nazis and neo-Nazis. Nationalism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism appear to ofer the solution to their coming-of-age problems. After Walter Bannert and co-writer Erich A. Richter witnessed an attack on a café by right-wing extremist youths, the director spent several years visiting neo-fascist youth clubs in order to understand the background to the rise of Nazism during the late 1970s. In his film, Bannert does not shy away from depicting sexualised and right-wing extremist violence; he also makes references to politicians of his time—such as right-wing extremist Norbert Burger. Bannert and his wife received threats following screenings of ths film, as did cinemas that showed it. In this sense, Bannert fulfilled his objective of making the audience feel “emotionally loaded” in a more radical way than he might have expected. (Bianca Jasmina Rauch)

At the beginning of the screening, an episode of 7–8 minutes from the cinema magazine SCOPE of 1982 and 1983 will be shown.

Walter Bannert: WAS KOSTET DER SIEG? (1981), HERZKLOPFEN (1984), GUMMIBÄRCHEN KÜSST MAN NICHT (1989)